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Military Coup Succeeds Easily in Guinea

NAIROBI, Kenya — By Thursday afternoon, the coup attempt in Guinea seemed to have simply become a coup.

In one fell swoop, most of the top politicians in the impoverished West African country surrendered themselves to the cadre of junior officers who began seizing power on Tuesday after the death of the country’s longstanding ruler. The army’s rank and file seemed to be lining up behind the junior officers. And the coup leaders swiftly replaced governors with military commanders.

“We are at your disposal,” the country’s prime minister said in a live radio address.

Though the young officers essentially shoved aside Guinea’s civilian leadership at gunpoint, there was not a lot of complaining among the populace.

People in Conakry, Guinea’s steamy, seaside capital, flooded back into the streets on Thursday, resuming their lives, playing soccer, going shopping, with many saying they hoped the coup would usher in better government.

“We’re all happy,” said Mamadou Bah, a tailor in Conakry. He said that if the junior officers did what they promised — namely, wipe out corruption and hold elections within two years — the people would support them.

Ahmedou Oury Bah, the minister of national reconciliation (who happens to have the same popular surname as the tailor), said he decided to succumb to the coup leaders because it was better than being hunted down, as the junior officers had threatened.

When asked if this meant that he supported the coup leaders, Mr. Bah answered in an indirect, but telling, way: “We’re acknowledging that they’re in power.”

Photo

Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, center, Guineas new president, with other army officers in Conakry on Thursday. City residents said they hoped the coup would usher in better government.Credit
Seyllou/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Guinea plunged into a political abyss after Lansana Conté, a chain-smoking, diabetic general who ruled the country for 24 iron-fisted years, died Monday at 74, apparently from an illness and with no publicly announced succession plans. Junior and mid-ranking officers rushed to fill the power gap. They started by storming the state radio and television headquarters. They then tightened their grip by taking control of administrative buildings and army bases in Conakry.

By Wednesday afternoon, the junior officers had announced that their spokesman, Moussa Dadis Camara, an army captain who is thought to be in his mid-40s and used to be in charge of fuel supplies, was the country’s new president.

Initially, there had been grumbling by some senior military commanders, who denounced the coup, and by top civilian leaders. But by Thursday, most of them seemed to have either capitulated or gone underground. No one inside Guinea appears to have mounted a challenge to the junior officers, despite widespread condemnation of the coup abroad.

Guinea has been in rocky waters for years. It was a country of immense promise after independence in 1958, with gold, diamonds, verdant banana fields, seemingly limitless aluminum ore and gushing rivers ideal for hydropower. It was considered one of the gems in the French colonial crown.

But Guinea slipped into obscurity under its first ruler, Ahmed Sékou Touré, a revolutionary who espoused Marxist policies and mostly shut out the West. After Mr. Touré died, Mr. Conté seized power in a military coup very similar to the one that took place this week.

He kept Guinea relatively stable, compared with neighbors like Liberia and Sierra Leone. But thanks to corruption and mismanagement, the economy was still a shadow of its potential. As Mr. Conté’s health declined, so did the country. Paralyzing strikes erupted last year and dozens of people were killed. In May, junior army officers mutinied, kidnapping a senior officer and demanding better pay.

Given that their country has been ruled by two notorious dictators for almost all of the past 50 years, many Guineans seemed to welcome the coup, or at least were not outspokenly against it. One word on many lips on Thursday seemed to echo a certain political phenomenon an ocean away: change.